SPITBULL

Monday, March 22, 2004

AT LEAST THE GUY WITH THE WTC SIGN WAS SAVVY ENOUGH TO HOLD IT OVER HIS FACE

Lileks today mines a rich vein of screediness regarding this past weekend's anti-war rallies. It's all good, but I was struck by this line near the end:

Pictures of Bush as Hitler sieg-heiling away would get them killed if this was truly the country they insist it is.

Are these yahoos really so thoroughly dense or so utterly blinded by ideology that they can't see this self-evident fact?

Look. You can be against all war in general on pacifist grounds. And you can be against this particular war in Iraq for any number of reasons--that it's a distraction from the wider war on terror, for instance, or that it will make us less rather than more secure because it will inflame terrorism, or that it lacked sufficient international support, or that the WMD justification was trumped up. Et cetera, et cetera. I don't think these reasons are very good ones, and I think pacifism as a general principle is loony, but at least these are reasons and principles. You know, supported by actual thoughts, however misguided they might be. But to call Bush Hitler, without stopping for the nanomoment of reflection it takes to realize that if Bush really were Hitler you'd be shot dead for saying so, is so intellectually bankrupt as to defy understanding.

Is this really the best the hard left can offer us? Because if it is, I think they are doing as much to guarantee another four years of Bush in the White House as the Republicans are.